Question: Do you know anything about the great big red arrow stuck in the ground in front of a house on Bay Road in Hadley?

I drive by it every day and can’t stop reciting lines from Longfellow’s poem.

- N.F., Belchertown

Answer: The Bernstein family put the arrow in front of their house to help mark their house and driveway because it’s set back from the road and obscured by trees, Martha Bernstein said.

“It was something whimsical I discovered on a bike ride,” she said.

She saw the arrow created by Leverett artist Bob Hepner, who had them at his home.

“The arrows are all about Bob Hepner,” she said. “They’re something whimsical to capture everyone’s eye.”

Arrows indicate, project and pierce, Hepner said on the Nines Festival website where he describes the arrows. “They travel across time and space. They move us from screen to screen and around the face of the clock and the dial of the compass. We are endlessly directed where to drive, what to buy, how to live, what to want. Putting arrows out in the world that indicate nothing in particular – I hope they point us in the direction of our dreams.”

By the way, we assume the poem you were referring to is Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s, “The Arrow and the Song,” which reads, in part: “I shot an arrow into the air, It fell to earth, I knew not where; For, so swiftly it flew, the sight Could not follow it in its flight ... . “